It’s been kind of an eventful couple of weeks. To start we had our first true Northwest BLIZZARD. I think we probably got about 2 inches at the max, but everything shut down. I didn’t go to work for two days, and Aaron worked from home. Turns out that even though the city is surrounded by snow-covered mountains, there is no readily available supply of sand or salt to clear the roads. Plus everyone drives porsches and doesn’t know how to drive in snow. We actually saw some neighbors try to push, yes I said push, a guys porsche SIDEWAYS after it slipped on the ice and ran into a parked car. Then we watched for another hour as they called a tow truck and got it pulled up the hill, only to discover that about four hours later all of the snow and ice was washed away. Oh, entertainment!
The other blogworthy event was World AIDS day, which was last Friday, December 1st. 
I have learned so much about this disease in the six months we have been here, and I’ve also learned how many things I can do to get involved. Friday morning I got up early and went down to the Women’s Shelter at the Union Gospel Mission to help the women there participate in a World AIDS day activity. These women are coming from either abusive situations or the street, and have tough lives, but contacted World Vision and said that they wanted to do something to help for World AIDS day. So World Vision sent them the supplies to create caregiver kits (medical supplies to help nurses care for AIDS victims). I got to the mission at about 6:30am and we weren’t even set up until 10am. Then about 20 women from the shelter worked for several hours, in the end making over 500 caregiver kits to send. It was a really neat experience to hear these women tell their stories, and to see how excited they were to be doing something helpful.
The other cool thing is that the news showed up and did a story on it. If you click here you can see the WV blog that talks about the different events that went on during World AIDS day. I think it is so hard to figure out what I can do as an individual to play a part in fighting this disease, but it is reassuring to know that so many people want to play a part.
After helping re-stock the assembly line for the caregiver kits, I ventured up to Seattle Pacific University to see the AIDS experience movie that they were showing all afternoon. I didn’t realize however that it is the same video that you can see online at http://www.worldvision/AIDSexperience. The guys voice is a little funny, but I think it is a powerful tool to educate people about how AIDS is spreading.
After that Aaron and I went to his work party which was in Bellevue. It was a funny affair with everyone all dolled up and then some random true-Microsofties that showed up in t-shirts and shorts. We had a good time and I got to meet some of his co-workers, which was nice. We also played a lot of Texas hold-em because the party entertainment was a “fake casino.” The best part was that anytime I went out in poker I got all new chips. I wish it were always like that…
